We have an exciting new product to introduce to you! As many of you know, Mike and I put on a big cookie convention in Salt Lake City called CookieCon, and I baked a lot (and I mean a LOT) of cookies for it so that the attendees can practice decorating. After the first CookieCon (fall of 2012), Mike and I were talking about how it’s a shame that there isn’t a dummy cookie for practicing, so that so much delicious butter and sugar wouldn’t get wasted practicing on cookies that would never get eaten. We even joked about a name for it… Notta Cookie. You know, in case someone tries to eat it, you say “Don’t eat it! It’s Notta Cookie!” Haha! And so the concept was born.

I kind of thought it was mostly a joke and a fun idea, but Mike was serious and determined. He started researching plastics and manufacturing. We found a local company to make the mold and another one to do the manufacturing. The mold was made with an actual cookie that I baked. We wanted it to be shaped and textured like a real cookie.

That way you’re practicing on a surface that is more realistic, and close to what you’ll experience using a real cookie. You can do anything on them that you would do on a real cookie– Piping, flooding, marbling, lettering, stenciling, painting, airbrushing… the list goes on as far as your imagination will take you.

You can either scrape the icing off while it’s still soft, or let it harden and pop it off with a metal spatula. They clean off so nice, and are dishwasher safe. They don’t stain either! When we got the initial sample of plastic, we poured straight food coloring (Americolor Gel Paste in Super Black, Super Red, Royal Blue, etc) all over it and let it sit for several days. It washed off very nicely, so we knew we had a winner.

We weren’t sure if they would be done in time for this year’s CookieCon, so I baked cookies again. As luck would have it, as soon as I was about done baking the CookieCon cookies, we got the call that the Notta Cookies were done! Darn. But we brought some with us anyway for people to try. Here are a couple of our awesome attendees practicing stenciling on the Notta Cookie.

(Kim and Beverly, you are both adorable! 🙂 And great job on your stenciling!)

The Notta Cookies were a hit! They are perfect for practicing all kinds of decorating techniques, and next CookieCon, I’m not baking as many cookies! Yay!!!

The Notta Cookie took almost exactly 18 months from concept to finished product, but it’s finally done, and you can start using them for your cookie decorating practice! You can find them here.

We also brought a few new cutter shapes to debut at CookieCon. We got them up on the site, and they are now available to everyone.

Check out the new KC exclusives. They are the Large and Small Fancy Sign and the Large and Small Thought Bubble. Incidentally, the thought bubble was this year’s Mystery Shape at CookieCon. Check out this link to see some of the crazy-creative things people did with it (scroll about 3/4 of the way down, past the regular sugar show entries to all the ones on the black background).

I’ve decided I’m not going to apologize for long (LONG) spells between blog posts. Because I’m busy, you know. I have a lot going on. So I’m not going to apologize for leaving you hanging. I’m not going to apologize for silence at the Karen’s Cookies Blog. Nope. Not going to do it. Because I don’t do that anymore. (So sorry!! I’m going to do better, I promise!!!)

No, instead of apologizing, I’ll just keep bribing you to stay tuned by doing giveaways. Comment on this post, and 5 lucky winners will be randomly selected (using Random.org) to receive one each of the new cutters and a Notta Cookie. Tell us what you think of the Notta Cookie and you’ll be entered! You have through Friday, Apr 4th to enter. Good Luck!